“I thought you would be expecting me,” said the one.
“I hoped that you would surmise as much,” answered the other.
“Wherever there can be found four handsbreadth of ground to turn around in and a ray to give us light.”
This briefest of dialogues ended, the two young men plunged into one of the narrow streets leading out from the Zocodover and vanished in the darkness like those phantoms of the night, which, after terrifying for an instant the beholder, dissolve into atoms of mist and are lost in the depth of the shadows.
A long time they went on, traversing the streets of Toledo, seeking a suitable place to end their quarrel, but the darkness of the night was so dense that the duel seemed impossible. Yet both wished to fight and to fight before the whitening of the east; for at dawn the royal hosts were to go forth, and Alonso with them.
So they pressed on, threading at random deserted squares, dusky alleys, long and gloomy passages, till at last they saw shining in the distance a light, a light small and waning, about which the mist formed a circle of ghostly, glimmering lustre.
They had reached the Street of the Christ, and the radiance discernible at one end seemed to come from the small lantern which illuminated then and illuminates still the image that gives the street its name.
On seeing it, both let escape an exclamation of joy and, quickening their steps toward it, were not long in finding themselves near the shrine in which it burned.
An arched recess in the wall, in the depths of which might be seen the image of the Redeemer, nailed to the cross, with a skull at his feet, a rude board covering for protection from the weather, and a small lantern hung by a cord, swaying with the wind and shedding a faint effulgence, constituted the entire shrine. About it clung festoons of ivy which had sprung up among the dark and broken stones forming, as it were, a curtain of verdure.
The cavaliers, after reverently saluting the image of Christ by removing their military caps and murmuring a short prayer, glanced over the ground, threw off their mantles and, each perceiving the other to be ready for the combat and both giving the signal by a slight motion of the head, crossed swords. But scarcely had the blades touched when, before either of the combatants had been able to take a single step or strike a blow, the light suddenly went out, leaving the street plunged in utter darkness. As if moved by the same thought, the two antagonists, on finding themselves surrounded by that instantaneous gloom, took a step backward, lowered the points of their swords to the ground and raised their eyes to the lantern, whose light, a moment before extinguished, began to shine anew at the very instant the duel was suspended.